I Might Not Be A Good Cook, But I Can Bake Like No Other!

I love to bake.  I find it relaxing and a great way to relieve stress. And if the act of baking something delicious doesn't work, or the smell of something delicious baking in the oven doesn't help.... 

There is ALWAYS the eating part...

Most of my life, my mom gave us a special shape for our birthday cakes.  It was always a surprise to us, what it would be, and I remember getting excited thinking about the different cakes we'd had, what could she come up with next???

As I got older and more involved in the kitchen, I discovered her secret.  A pair of great cookbooks specifically for these special shape cakes.   

Now with my kids, I do the same thing.  We rarely have a 'normal' cake. Many times the kids have the family birthday and a 'friends' birthday, so we have a layer cake for family night and a shape cake for the party with friends.  I have sometimes allowed them the choice of what cake they want, but sometimes the surprise is the best part.  

I have been known to build the boys a great theme party, and try to find a cake that fits the theme. A big favorite was our Lego Cake. This was pretty easy to make and has been requested more than once. (not my picture. I normally use whip cream, not frosting on my cakes). 

There is much to be said about building a bit of magic in the kitchen.  I love to surprise the kids with special treats.  

For Halloween last year, I sent Chocolate chip cookies to school with the boys.  Half of them were piped with spiderwebs in white icing and the other half had chocolate icing spiders.  It took a fair amount of time, but the kids (both classes) and most of the teachers now look for my cookies and treats on special occasions.  It's worth the effort!  

For Valentines Day this year, we had our special family dinner a few days early. Just making sure that we were all here to enjoy it together.  So on February 14th, there was not much excitement around the house.  I needed to fix that!

I have made a heart shaped cake too many times to count and I wanted something a little different. And since this was a treat more for the kids than anyone else, I wanted something they would like but not a ton of leftovers.  So I found a tiny little secret to making heart shaped cupcakes in a regular muffin pan.  

30 seconds of extra effort making the cupcakes.... TOTALLY worth it in the end.  Added frosting and a cinnamon heart to the tops and it was a valentine treat for everyone.

I have heard a few times that it would be so nice to be so creative... but really I am not.  I may put out a bit more energy to make these things, but I rarely come up with the idea on my own.  So, if you haven't followed my links above yet...

I'll give away my secret weapons for free.

well, not ALL of my secrets....

Disney Family Fun is a great website... and for more than just recipes.  It has a ton of great ideas on it.  And another favorite, in fact one of my MOST favorites, is Betty Crocker.  How can anyone not love Betty Crocker?  Really. I think our original cake book is a Betty Crocker book.  This site has so many great ideas, the recipes needed, and of course the right box mix to pick if you are not a bake from scratch kind of person.  AND now... I just noticed today... there are even videos to walk you through some of the really cool ideas!

So there. I shared.  

Now, next time I come by, I'll tell you I'm coming so you'll bake a cake.   

(darn, now I have that song in my head....)  

And it better be a cool shape!

Broccoli Cheese Soup For My Sick Family

Well, we are finally on the mend again... I'm sorry for such a long break between posts.  Everyone one has been sick at least once in the last 6 weeks here. Three adults, three kids all down at varying times with some sort of bug.  I am hopeful that the last of it has now passed.

Today is a snowy and windy kind of day.  Great day to make some home made buns and my favorite broccoli cheese soup.  There are very few things I enjoy more than a good thick bowl of cream of broccoli soup. Given my cooking history I had to search high and low for a good recipe that I could actually manage to make.

The broccoli cheese soup recipe I found first was heavy on onions, so it didn't really taste like broccoli anything.  But the directions were simple enough and, after all, this is soup I'm making... I just used less onions the next time.  It was great when I made it for me, so I attempted to share with the family. 

It's not a favorite for every one, but it is definitely something they will all eat.  And that is a rare occasion here!

Right now, while I write, the veggies are simmering away on the stove in half broth/half water.  Today I've added a small onion and a clove of garlic as well as some celery.  (I'm really big on onions right now, since they do seem to help fight these flu germs!)  

It smells absolutely FANTASTIC in my house right now. 

Once the buns are ready to bake, I will add the cheese and make the soup rich and creamy.

The dough is rising as we speak and the buns will be fresh out of the oven just in time for dinner.  I'm making the pull apart buns (also called clover leaf buns, I guess) as they are a family favorite.  Thank you to my dear mother in law for letting me in on that secret!! I've never known my trucker to eat so much of something home baked!  

Just by changing the way I baked them, I transformed these buns from 'okay' to 'awesome'.

And there is nothing... absolutely nothing better .....than having still warm buns to dip in the broccoli cheese soup that has been slow cooked all day... when the snow is blowing all around the house.

Stay warm!!

I Am The Messiest Cook I Know

Last night, I made spaghetti for dinner.  In selecting the vegetables that were going in the sauce, I found the sweet potato in the drawer that we didn't cook with Christmas dinner.  So, being the

Brilliant 

woman that I am.... I decided to make soup from the remaining vegetables that were hiding in the crisper, wanting desperately to be used before being thrown out....

Of course, at the same time I was browning my beef, starting the sauce for the spaghetti....

My poor husband, who doesn't often eat pasta by choice arrives home to competing 'aroma's' from the kitchen and wonders if he should have grabbed take out on his way home. 

I can see the fear in his eyes as he tries to politely ask whats for dinner... So far the only thing RIGHT in the kitchen is the beef that is browning for my meat sauce.  Now, we normally compromise when I make spaghetti, if I grate cheese for the topping, he eats the sauce without complaint as a topping for buttered bread.

OOPS, Sorry Honey!  I didn't take the bread out of the freezer.... "Do you want toast? Do you want me to run to the store quick?"

Sweet man, he says no....

I puree my veggies for the soup, have it simmering nicely and the sauce for my spaghetti is simmering also. I'm somewhat grateful that I am suffering a stuffy nose as I am sure that the competing smells were not all that pleasing.  Boiled up the pasta and we finally sat down to dinner. It seems that quick spaghetti sauce took FOREVER to cook?!?!?!?

Hubby goes to get his plate. Asks where the noodles are... I've only made enough for the kids and I, purely out of habit... In more than 15 years, I can't honestly remember ever seeing him eat spaghetti sauce WITH noodles.  So I just didn't make him any....

By the end of the evening, I had no energy left and could not force myself to do the dishes.  I finally flopped in bed and vowed to deal with them in the morning.

How in the world did my kitchen get buried?  

It was so full this morning, I could barely find the counter or stove top. 

Factor in a one pot soup adventure, one pot for the spaghetti sauce, and a frying pan for the meat.....

My poor starving man who didn't eat with us, so no dishes from him....

Where did the dishes all come from?  There were no spoons in the drawer!  Spoons?  I have roughly 35 spoons in that drawer! And we ate spaghetti....not the soup.... 

Glasses?  Coffee Mugs?  I think my dishes smelled my cooking and tried to commit suicide by jumping out of the cupboards....

A full, and I mean seriously packed, load through the dishwasher, and still about 45 minutes spent washing dishes.... and I finally had a counter.  Albeit a filthy counter.  I scrubbed the counter top while my coffee was brewing...wiped off the top of the dishwasher. 

And the front

And the sides??  Oh, man...

Stove top next. yuck.

It's a good thing I get distracted easily or I wouldn't have noticed the pretty speckled pattern on the wall from the red spaghetti sauce and the orange soup splatter on the wall beside the stove...

If I take longer cleaning up my kitchen

than I do actually cooking the food...... 

I have a problem, don't I?

Chicken Thursday? Nope, Not Here!

Every time I make tacos or anything similar, I think of that commercial. I tried to find a video of it online, but was not able to.  Otherwise I would have posted it here to get it stuck in your head too!

I am not a menu planner like that. I know a lot of people that are. I'm sure that, ages ago, Mom was like that too.  But it still doesn't get the image of a chicken in a Thursday sweater out of my head.

Last night the kiddos wanted tacos. I had no soft tortillas in the house (or at least not enough for them!!) and I really didn't feel like tacos.  The thrill of a taco is purely in the act of putting them together, and I just did not want to get it all together.  Especially since I have to cut up all the usual options to please the family even though they hardly eat all of the ingredients. I have had to make a deal with the kids that the first taco MUST HAVE MEAT.  They could care less if it was a vegetarian meal, it's really all about the salsa and cheese.

So instead of regular tacos, I made the taco beef, grated cheese and cut up a tomato.  I layered these in a pie plate and baked it a few minutes to melt the cheese.  It wasn't taco pie (the kids didn't want taco pie) so we called it taco DIP and they ate it with tortilla chips.  They ate a TON without me having to fight about it!

I also had a strange craving for refried beans.  Which is NOT a normal ingredient for anything in my house.  Usually only something found in my dinner if I order a 7 layer burrito at Taco Bell.  I don't even know if they make that one anymore.  So, I googled refried beans and found that it is often made with pinto beans but can be made with kidney beans.  I have an incredible collection of cans of kidney beans. It's a make or break ingredient for my chili.  I don't think chili is quite right with out them, but can't get the kids to eat any of it if they see the kidney bean in there.

So, I drained and mashed the kidney beans, spiced them up and fried them up.

I actually learned yesterday that refried beans does not mean beans that have been refried, but actually that the 're' prefix is often used in Mexico in place of 'well'.  So refried beans are actually 'well fried'.

I was incredibly impressed!  That was super easy to make and absolutely delicious.  Only one of the three kids would eat it, but it was all used.  Of course when you mash them up and fry them until almost all of the moisture is gone, there really isn't a lot of bean left....

Some days I wonder where these ideas come from.  I don't know what drives me to figure out how to make things that no one but me even likes.

After all of that, I found that giving things the right name will make kids eat anything. 

How To Make Your Kids Eat Dinner

Tonight, I had this massive craving for pasta.  The trucker was working later, still home in the evening but not home for dinner, so this worked perfectly.  He's not a noodle guy.
I decided on Chicken and Mushrooms with Penne and Pesto sauce, which I loved and the little princess inhaled!
My boys don't like mushrooms (when they can see them) and they are not big fans of 'fake chicken' (the kind with skin and bones removed).  They believe that all pasta should be like KD.  Super cheesy and only in that shape!

I had store bought pesto that had just a hint of lemon in it.  My boys LOVE lemons, they often ask for them and will almost always eat them like oranges.  So for tonight's dinner, I sliced up a fresh lemon and lined the pieces up on the edge of the plates. The meal looked gourmet!!

A little sprinkle of lemon over the pasta, then they ate what was left of the fresh lemon... and then cleaned their plates!  They ate a meal full of things they don't like, simply because of a few slices of lemon.

Don't I wish I had thought of this earlier!

Oh, and before I forget... for those who are curious... 
Yes, the potato salad was great as was the pork, the company and the entire evening with friends and family!!